Why I'm leaving OpenAI to build telepathy
Naomi Bashkansky, a former OpenAI researcher, explains why she quit to co-found Conduit, a company building thought-to-text models trained on non-invasive neural data. She envisions a future where we communicate with AI through thoughts, describes the scaling laws that make it feasible, and shares her excitement about the audacious vision, brilliant colleagues, and fun research problems.
My thoughts get sent to Conduit's model, which uses its priors over language and the kinds of things I might say to output: conduit://thought-stream → codex $ decode --source=neural-latent --autosend --to=codex
- tylerrobinson
> I want to feel what my Codex feels.
Yeesh. I guess that makes one of us. Truly one of the more horrifying short stories I’ve read.
- nullorempty
From the article.
>Thought-to-text, aka telepathy
No, that's not telepathy. I'd leave the term alone. Consider it to be reserved for... well... telepathy!
- jszymborski
Beyond all the other more salient objections one might have with this pitch, there is just the very practical fact that there really isn't enough signal from "noninvasive" sensors to get the sort of data they are promising.
It's been explained to me by neuroscientists I respect that EEGs and friends are like trying to listen in on a conversation happening on center ice from the parking lot of the arena. You can maybe tell if there is a match going on if there is a rowdy crowd but that's about it.
- G3nD
"I feel good about the vision, because it builds towards a more human future" I wonder if the author truly believes this. I could maybe buy some sort of inevitability argument, but this current framing is very hard to take seriously.
- sothatsit
There’s quite a few out-of-the-norm assumptions in this.
1. Superhuman AI is inevitable.
2. Writing will become a bottleneck to communicate effectively with it.
3. Higher communication bandwidth would let us keep up with the machines.
4. Therefore with higher bandwidth humans could stay part of AI decision processes.
5. That makes it more “human”, as humans would be kept in-the-loop without becoming a bottleneck to be worked around.
6. If you let superintelligence write into your brain, that lets you merge with the machine.
- baubino
> My prediction: In a couple years, the main way we'll talk with our AIs is with our thoughts. They will not be a super-smart automated intern or coworker that you desperately try to keep up with. They will be a natural, joyful extension of you.
Ah, finally! To be liberated from the burden of speaking! Perhaps soon the AI will even think for us!
On a more serious note, this is additional evidence that Wall-E stands as the most accurate sci-fi projection of the future.
- Dependance
What is the benefit ?
Sharing thoughts to the external world would be like going to a bakery and walking out with flour and eggs.
Isn't the act of talking/writing part of the thinking ? Am I just going to share intrusive thoughts and half-baked ideas to my CIA agent now ?
- cdrnsf
I thought this was a parody when I opened it.